Wednesday, 4 May 2016

Spring Cleaning: Can You Clean Your House With Only Two Ingredients?

Hands up who has a cleaning cupboard that is full to bursting with expensive cleaning products that have barely been touched since they were bought? *puts hand in air*

This is a really lovely book; beautiful imagery, plus lots of environmentally friendly ideas for cleaning your home. You can buy a copy here.

I think there are two reasons why I personally put off doing a big spring clean; firstly the thought of having to dig around in the cupboard to find the right products is almost as boring and tiresome as the cleaning itself, but also I am rather conscious of all the chemicals used within some of the products and using some (like oven cleaner, for example) genuinely scares me! Well, what if you could throw all of them out and replace them with just two easy to use ingredients?

Blogger Jen Gale decided to ditch her usual cleaning products and try it out, so we can all finally know the answer to that all important question - can you clean your house with only two ingredients?

Jen, who is not a fan of cleaning, has tried all the products that promised to make cleaning easier, in the hope that it would encourage her to actually do it. But it didn’t. Then she decided to challenge herself to not buy anything new for a year – she would simply have to make do and mend things. Speaking in the Express, she says: “I realised how materialistic we’d become as a society and I was as guilty as the next person, buying things I didn’t need and stowing them away in the cupboard.”

She wanted to show her two children that they didn’t have to keep buying new things. The rules were – everything bought must be second hand, pre-owned, vintage, or reconditioned. The only things they could buy new were food and some essential toiletries.

Although the ‘rules’ meant she could buys things such as cleaning products it made her more aware of what she was buying and the impact of some products on the environment. She had already started making her own deodorant using solid coconut oil, corn flour, bicarbonate of soda and essential oils. So she started to look around for gentler alternatives to harsh chemicals and, already finding options to use in the bathroom, she eventually started to investigate DIY solutions to store-bought products for the cleaning cupboard.

Researching ingredients for her homemade cleaning products she found that there were two main ingredients in every product; white vinegar and bicarbonate of soda.

According to the thrifty blogger, who claims to have replaced a whole box full of various different products with just these two things, it actually works. She now uses these two products to tackle pretty much all of the household cleaning – using it to create a general cleaning spray, a window and glass cleaner, toilet cleaner and limescale remover.

So, can you clean your house with only two ingredients? Technically yes.

But, if you can’t be bothered to clean your own house, let alone make your own cleaning products then why not let the professionals do it for you instead? Call in Molly Maid Spring Cleaning and let them do the hard work for you while you sit back and relax ;)